http://www.w3.org/ -- 10 August 2006 -- Furthering its
mission of enriching access to the Web through mobile devices, and in support
of the rapidly growing market for diverse mobile devices, W3C
has published a milestone draft of
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a graphics standard suitable for both
mobile and desktop devices. SVG, an XML-based format,
enables the creation of interactive two-dimensional vector graphics and
animations. The latest version of the standard, SVG 1.2 or SVG Tiny, is small enough for mobile
devices and powerful enough for the desktop.

"With people demanding rich, interactive graphical display of information
on a handset, it's become critical for applications developers to have a
graphical format that is truly Web enabled, with real-time update over a
network and event-based interactivity," explained Chris Lilley, W3C
Interaction Domain and Graphics Activity Lead. "SVG Tiny 1.2 introduces
important features and refinements based on deployment experience with the
very successful SVG Tiny
1.1."

Publication of SVG Tiny 1.2 as a Candidate Recommendation is a signal that
there is broad consensus on the technical content of the document. SVG Tiny
is already being implemented; W3C now invites implementation experience from
the community as an integral part of the W3C standardization process.

SVG's Proven Record, Now Improved for Mobile Devices

SVG already benefits from wide
adoption in mobile telephones, commercial mobile services, and in desktop
browsers such as Opera and Firefox, which now ship with native support for
SVG. In 2003, responding to industry demand and requests from the SVG
developer community, the SVG Working Group introduced SVG Tiny, designed for
mobile devices. SVG Tiny 1.1 provides an open standard solution for
delivering graphical content that works equally well on handsets and
desktops.

Industry and Other Standards Bodies Poised to Adopt New Standard

Since SVG Tiny was first published, mobile device capabilities have
expanded in exciting ways; industry leaders and other standards organizations
have looked to W3C to expand upon the SVG Tiny profile and have lent their
support for the format, including commitments to incorporate SVG Tiny 1.2
into their own requirements. These commitments and other information about
support for SVG can be found on the SVG
testimonials page.

SVG Tiny 1.2 is expected to be incorporated into profiles developed within
3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
Release 6, and the Open Mobile Terminal
Platform has made SVG one of the core requirements for browsers.